ImageIngester and ImageIngesterPro do more than just copy images from your camera or card to your computer: They automate tedious, but important, steps in your workflow that you'd otherwise have to do manually, every time you ingest. Steps like making a backup, verifying images, renaming image files and arranging them into folders, applying metadata, and converting to DNG.

Arranging images into folders, set up however you like. Perhaps something like 2006/12/04 or 2006/2006-12-04 or Commercial/Muriel's Wedding/01234-01399.

Converting images to DNG, which is Adobe's universal raw format. You can choose most of the DNG options, such as full-size JPEG preview and embedding the original raw.

Verifying images, to help ensure they got copied OK from the card. You can run DNG Converter without actually converting to check raws; the checker for JPEGs is built-in.

Launching a viewer, so iView Media Pro, Bridge, or whatever you choose gets started as soon as ingestion is complete.

Adding bulk metadata, so you can insert data that applies to the entire ingestion, such as your copyright notice, keywords, subject and location information, and even iView Media Pro catalog sets. (enhanced in Pro)

Filtering by image type, which allows you to ignore unwanted files, such as JPEGs from a camera that insists on including a JPEG along side of each raw. Or, you can choose to include only designated files, which is handy when you're using ImageIngesterPro to re-ingest an entire folder tree on your hard drive. (Pro only)

Tracking clients, projects, cards, and ingestions in a built-in SQLite3 database, which allows you to review the details of every ingestion you've made, including any notes you've entered at ingestion time. (Pro only)

Handling multi-camera shoots so that files from different cameras can be renamed in time-sequence order. (Pro only)

GPS tagging based on a track log generated from any GPS device, with optional time adjustment.